The online parental monitoring tool IMSafer, which works with IMs such as Yahoo Messenger, AOL, and MSN, has let loose their new service for MySpace. Well, in the end of last year, MySpace revealed its plans to purge phishing worms and sex offenders and then in the beginning of 2007, they said to offer parental notification software dubbed ‘Zephyr‘ that will help the parents to find out what name, age and location their children use to characterize themselves on MySpace.
Unfortunately, a few days later, MySpace was sued by four families whose under-age daughters were sexually abused by offenders they met on MySpace. Such incidents have happened in the past too.
Let’s come back to the main point. It would be interesting to see whether IMSafer could prove an effective against online predators or not. IMSafer keeps a tab on the keywords that hint the presence of any malevolent action. IMSafer’s software can track every computer where an observed username signs in.
Although it’s not as sophisticated as Zephyr, IMSafer allows the parents to keep an eye on their children’s online activity, despite of location factor.
IMSafer is available for free for a single username service with instant messengers and sets you back $30 per year for unlimited number of usernames.
